How One Man Pitched to Giants --
And Still Lived to Tell the Tale

By

John Buskin

Updated May 23, 1996 11:59 p.m. ET

WHO ARE the small-business nomads who bet on their wits and tempt the gods by trying to gauge the depths of corporate America's pockets? They're guys in rumpled gabardines clutching ungainly leatherette cases that hold 36-by-18-inch presentation pads, running to make a 6:50 a.m. flight to Milwaukee or Peterborough or Winston-Salem. See the one on the edge of panic screaming, ''Did you remember the overheads?'' That was me.

I pitched and prodded anyone who would listen at beer companies, drug companies, car companies. I...